two week sketchbook challenge

 The good thing about not blogging regularly for a period, is that you build up lots of work to post when you finally get back on it. Here's a project I completed earlier in the year.

So, I saw this post on the rather excellent Doodlers Anonymous where somebody completed a sketchbook in two hours. TWO. HOURS. I loved the idea.

 And, I had a couple of new cheap sketchbooks that I'd got in some sale. It gave me an idea of what to do with them. I should say that they were quite big sketchbooks (over 70 double page spreads) and so I set another goal; TWO WEEKS.

Which would pretty much mean taking the sketchbook wherever I went (including Ikea) and drawing even more obsessively than normal.

I started the sketchbook at a life drawing session that I used to attend weekly. It was a good place to start as that week we were focusing on drawing body parts, which meant I could fill up quite a few pages of feet and hands and, well, other bits.

And whilst I was totally pissed off that my washing machine was playing up, I did get a few drawings done waiting around at the laundrette.

I drew my friend's dog and I drew photos of my friends on my window sill.

The thing you have to do while speed drawing in this way is to ditch the fine liner pens. I pretty much used thick pens for the most of it.

I was also going to say you need to forget the detail, but I seemed to capture quite lot at my friend's gorgeous canal boat home - in both the one above and below.

Now it comes to something when you get home from another trip to Ikea, drop your bags on the floor and draw that, but I was determined to get that book finished.

The cat was not impressed.

Obviously these are just a tiny selection of the drawings I made. And they'll never be my best. But that wasn't the point.

It was a challenge, and I wasn't going to give up. I kept on pedalling.

In some places I had a field day.

Like at the antiques auction.

Where there was no shortage of things to draw. I was even sketching whilst bidding.

And I did it. And one of the things that pleased me most about finishing the book was that I finished it exactly two weeks to the day, at life drawing. And with the same model that was posing when I started.

So, if you're ever stuck for something to do, start yourself a two week sketchbook. Give it a go. And yeah, sometime in the near future I'll be giving the two hour sketchbook a bash.